But if you’re going to wag the finger and declare yourself the champion of a “moral not political” issue (albeit one to which green presidents with R’s after their names are not allowed to be recognised) then you’d better be the greenest sumbitch that ever flew a private jet across two continents and then planted a tree, or it will all come back to kick you in the ass.

Iowahawk shows how eco-sinner can repent. I plan to set up a tip-jar so that you too can buy carbon credits from The Virginian!

Are you concerned that your profligate personal lifestyle is harming the environment? Losing sleep over the long-term ecological damage resulting from those greenhouse gases constantly emitted by your family, your cars, your pets, and your shrubbery? Do you want to become carbon-neutral, but just don't know how?

Well rejoice, sinner! Carbon atonement is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Malibu set -- with the Iowahawk EcoPals Network! This unique new system lets you, the average Joe planet rapist, cleanse your tortured psyche of the stain of enviro-guilt for as little as $9.95 per year! If enough of you follow this simple three step program, we can save the world for our children -- who will soon be frolicking with healthy polar bears atop Earth's reforested glaciers. Act now before it's too late!

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Al Gore and Carbon Offsets

Just a day after Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar and Gore himself was feted by the Hollywood millionaires and billionaires, another inconvenient truth emerged. It turns out that Mr. and Mrs. Gore live in a 20 room Nashville mansion with a separate pool house that consumes about 20 times the energy of the typical American home. The Gores gas and electric bill for their Nashville mansion was $30,000 in 2006. It has exposed Mr. Gore to the charge of hypocrisy since he is the country’s most visible exponent of energy conservation as part of his much publicized effort to save the planet from environmental doom via anthropomorphic (man made) global warming.

…purchasing offsets only means that Gore doesn't want to make the same kind of sacrifices that he's asking other families to make. He's using a modern form of indulgences in order to avoid doing the penance that global-warming activism demands of others. It means that the very rich can continue to suck up energy and raise the price and the demand for electricity and natural gas, while families struggle with their energy costs and face increasing government regulation and taxation.

There is some truth in both comparisons. I would like to enter a third comparison: the sumptuary laws. Sumptuary laws were much in vogue during the medieval times as well as periods of time in colonial America.

Sumptuary laws (from Latin sumtuariae leges) were laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. They were an easy way to identify social rank and privilege, and were usually used for social discrimination. This frequently meant preventing commoners from imitating the appearance of aristocrats, and sometimes also to stigmatize disfavored groups. In the Late Middle Ages sumptuary laws were instated as a way for the nobility to cap the conspicuous consumption of the up-and-coming bourgeoisie of medieval cities.

Note that the people who are at the forefront of the environmental movement, men like Al Gore and the Hollywood glitterati who gave him a standing ovation for this environmental stands were not even momentarily inconvenienced by the rules they have tried to have the rest of the planet adopt. The arrived by private plane and stretch limousine, to over-lighted and air-conditioned auditoriums, to see and be seen by millions of Americans via carbon destroying video systems without even a thought to the impact of their wretched excess on the planet.

But hypocrisy is really not the danger here. We are all hypocrites, each of us pretending to be better than we are. The danger is that the use of “carbon offsets” will create two things that re morally monstrous: a de-facto sumptuary law and the impoverishments of the poor and powerless of this planet.

The creation of an aristocratic elite that differentiates itself from the hoi polloi by its ability to buy “carbon offsets” while the rest of the planet is forced by environmental laws into a smaller and smaller carbon straightjacket is not so far fetched. What is government run by the environmentalists of Gore’s stripe to do if the people won’t give up their wasteful SUVs?

“There ought to be a law” will be the battle cry from the Federal agencies, the green groups, the obscenely rich and the publishers of the leading MSM voices (whose owners are summering on their Hampton estates). And who will have the resources to buy out of the environmental sumptuary laws? Why the likes of Al Gore, the Hollywood mega-millionaires and those who inherit media empires. They are, after all, busy making the planet safe for “the children” and need the room, the comfort, the private jets and limos as they toil in the vineyards of public policy for the good of the rest of us.

But as carbon offsets become mainstream, who is to provide those offsets? A momentary thought reveals that allowing Al Gore and his ilk to expend prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases while the rest of the planet stands still will not do anything to reduce the dreaded CO2 problem. What will be needed will be the sacrifice of others. The carbon footprint of the bushmen of the Kalahari is small indeed when compared to that of “Inconvenient Al.” When carbon offsets by planting trees is found to be insufficient or even counterproductive (some complain that a tree gives off more CO2 during decomposition that it absorbs while it is alive) the real gains to be made in carbon offsets is in the great masses of people. Imagine the reduction in carbon emissions if our betters reduce the human population to the Homo sapiens version of the chicken farm. Pile us into small apartment coops, take away our frivolous cars and replace them with “public transportation.” How about a law requiring us to work from home to makes us that much more energy efficient. I am sure that there will be studies to point out how little place it actually takes for an average family to live...but not he Gore family.

Carbon offsets have been embraced by a certain element of the Libertarian and Conservative movement as a free-market answer to the problem of pollution. But that’s because the secondary effects of such a concept have not been considered. Carbon offsets can have the effect of keeping poor people in perpetual poverty and reducing those who are trying to climb out of poverty bake into destitution.

Far fetched? Read this:

East AfricaA Norwegian firm called Tree Farms (or Fjordgløtt, as it was then called) started operations in Uganda and Tanzania (and later in Malawi). In Uganda, it obtained a very cheap 50-year lease on 5,160 hectares east of the town Jinja in the Bukaleba Forest Reserve on Lake Victoria. Tree Farms planned to plant the land mainly with eucalyptus and fast-growing pines. The project has been criticised for forcing people in five communities off their lands and paying too low rent for the land

Imagine the revenue from carbon offsets one of the African kleptocracies can generate by impoverishing its miserable population even farther to provide carbon offsets to Al Gore and those who wish to erase their carbon footprint by any means necessary.

Monday, February 26, 2007

When enough "isolated incidents" happen they are not isolted any more.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Two college students involved in an alleged attack by an angry cab driver last month testified Monday that his rage came seemingly out of the blue.Video: Crash Victim Says Cab Driver's Rage Unexpected

They said they weren't arguing or discussing religion, but that the cab driver went on a rant saying, "Hitler was right" and that "white people should be eradicated from the earth.”Click here to find out more!

The students said they paid their fare, but that the cab driver accelerated and ran over Jeremy Inbus.

Major Crandall flew into the "Valley of Death" 14 times in one day delivering supplies and evacuating the wounded. The fire was so fierce that three helicopter he piloted were destroyed.

A far cry from the kind of person who leaves the field of battle after three months and three very questionable "paper cuts" and then calls those who he left behind a ravaging horde reminiscent of "Genghis Khan."

The Washington punditocracy has proclaimed far and wide that Republicans, disenchanted with the war in Iraq, are abandoning President Bush in droves, leaving him the lamest of lame ducks. However, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll suggests Bush might not be as wounded as he appears — at least not among his party faithful.

The Feb. 9-11 poll puts Bush's job approval at 37%, but among people who identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, his approval rating is 76%.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued a press release late Monday:

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

It's almost inevitable that every action causes a reaction. And the GlobalWarming hysterics have gone too far too fast in trying to gull a public that has lots of questions about the "science" that is intended to prove that global warming is a fact and that it is cause by humans.

Just as Hollywood stars are now seen as political weirdos that are not to be taken seriously, the political movement headed by Al Gore is inviting something that serious movements can't survive: ridicule.

It also invited people who are experts in their own fields like the gentleman who has created "Climatepolice.com". From Newsbusters:

Joseph Conklin, a meteorologist with expertise in the analysis of surface weather observations, has launched a website to help promote alternative scientific views on climate change. He believes these views have been overshadowed and even wrongly criticized by sensationalist news stories.

"The goal of the website is to show the public that other research on climate change exists and the debate is not over. In science, alternate views should always be welcomed, not silenced," Conklin states.

From the website:

Climatepolice.com is dedicated to promoting an open exchange and dialog on climate change. To achieve that goal, research and articles with alternate views on climate change will be the primary sources of news and information on this site. We will not include any news or information with sensationalist claims; only sources with sound scientific evidence or research will be used.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

If you think that "making it up" is something new in the history of the media, this article is a wonderful corrective.

What is funny as hell is that an award to honor fearless reporting is named for a reporter who invented a completely bogus WW II history for himself as an ace fighter pilot.

Polk cut a dashing figure as a newsman, but he also cut out the real story of his World War II service as a naval officer and replaced it with a huge fraud. He deserves to join the growing roster of American journalists whose dishonesty has gravely injured their profession.

Dan Rather was not the first newsman to fake military records, and won't be the last.

The upward trajectory in the number of Christians in the Third World has met the descending trend line of First World congregations and has inexorably shifted the center of Christianity away from Europe to Asia, Latin America and Africa. In a very short while, nearly 70% of Christians will be in the non-European world.

In the part of the world that has not surrendered to the spirit of the age and modern "ethics," Christianity thrives and comes back to teach lessons to the "Church of What's Happening now."

From the News & Observer. We learn that when black girls get raped it illustrates a universal truth, bang on pots and pans and demand the accused be castrated. When white girls get raped we go on with our lives. The viewpoint of the Duke faculty in all its high priced glory.

KC Johnson's blog "Durham in Wonderland" has been very influential in uncovering the incredible miscarriage of justice in the Duke rape case. What surprised me was the fact that Johnson got involved because of the actions of the Duke faculty.

...the GOP front-runners (save perhaps Newt Gingrich) all have the advantage over Hillary. She may have star power, but you get the sense that most Americans would like to have their picture taken with her and then drink alone. With the exception of Sen. Christopher Dodd, I’d guess all of the Democratic wannabes are more likable than Clinton, too. Sexism probably is part of the equation, but not as much as Clinton’s defenders will claim. There’s room for perceptions to change as we get to know the candidates (though we already know Hillary pretty well).

...Murtha was willing to trade favors in return for investment in his district — and suggested he might take cash down the line. In other words, Murtha wasn't calling for an immediate surrender of his scruples and principles, but rather a phased withdrawal of them....

Fine, Murtha was never convicted. Neither was Nixon. Venal hack John Murtha was willing to sell his country's interests to Arab sheiks. This is the man Democrats have put up to lead the anti-war charge today, demanding that the commander in chief stop deploying troops against his Arab friends.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

From the City Journal, we find out who takes over the helm of Harvard now that Larry Summers has been defenestrated:

The feminist takeover of Harvard is imminent. The Harvard Crimson reported yesterday that the university is about to name as its new president Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard’s Corporation, which is likely to recommend Faust to the university’s Board of Overseers for confirmation, could not have more clearly repudiated Lawrence Summers’s all-too-brief reign of meritocracy and academic honesty, or more openly signaled that Harvard will now be the leader in politically correct victimology.

The Climate Change Controversy: A Perspective

Our friend Dennis Gartman, publisher of The Gartman Letter, a daily commentary on the global capital markets, has brought to our attention the June 24th issue of Time magazine. The article begins:

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.

Sounds like the beginning of an ad for Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” in which the former Vice President predicts the end of the world as we know it unless global warming is stopped.

But wait … the article is actually warning us of:

However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

The proof is everywhere for scientist to see:

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Since that time, government regulations and industrial efforts have been aimed at cleaning up the environment, reducing harmful emissions and industrial by-products.

Surely our power plants and automobiles are a lot cleaner and more fuel efficient than their counterparts in 1974.

So has there been a clear reversal of the global cooling that was supposed to be the harbinger of the coming ice age? Or are we been had ... again?

And if we are being misled, as seems logical to me from the hysterical predictions coming out of the global warming advocates, what is the motive behind the push to “do something” about the so-called anthropomorphic (or man-made) global warming? What are the recommended “cures” and who benefits from their implementation? Surely that is a fair question.

Byron York in the Washington Post points out what is truly bizarre about the prosecution of Scooter Libby. The judge has ruled that the core of the case cannot be discussed or even mentioned.

After the testimony of star prosecution witness Tim Russert, Walton scanned the jurors' queries and announced, "There is going to be one question I'm not going to ask. I've concluded that that question is not appropriate and therefore you should not speculate as to what the response would have been."

What was he talking about? A moment later, Walton told the jurors: "What Mrs. Wilson's status was at the CIA, whether it was covert or not covert, is not something that you're going to hear any evidence presented to you on in this trial."

"Whether she was, or whether she was not, covert is not relevant to the issues you have to decide in this case," he said.

Over at Commentary, Lisa Schiffren raises an interesting question: At what point does a particular minority group become large enough to be a significant domestic political constituency? She notes that the oft-cited figure of "eight million Muslims in the US" may, in fact, be only three million and then adds:

Moreover, of these, only a minuscule 4,761 are dues-paying members of CAIR, which presents itself as the community’s authoritative voice.

And yet everybody (including some of my wobblier editors around the map) jumps when CAIR complains about this or that. 4,761 members of the Ladies’ Aid Society can’t command that kind of instant deference. So why do 4,761 members of CAIR have a prominence out of all proportion to their numbers?

Thursday, February 15, 2007

The key question: In the late '90s and early years of this decade, did the CIA do a good job in predicting 9/11 or assessing Saddam's WMD? Those two numbers and three letters provide the context for the sham "controversy" surrounding former Undersecretary Douglas Feith. Did the CIA see 9/11 coming? Did the agency produce any reports asserting boldly that Saddam did not have the WMD that everyone thought he did?

Was the CIA, in 2002, an agency to be trusted to get the big ones right?

Of course not. The professionals of the agency tried, but they failed. After 9/11 the professionals at the DoD decided to look hard at the intelligence product coming out of the CIA concerning al Qaeda and Saddam. Now partisans are attempting to argue that DoD shouldn't do such a thing --a conclusion that would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous.

...I’m skeptical about how mere criticism of judges and their rulings somehow undermines independence, and I suggest it’s somewhat disingenuous to even mention the two concepts in the same phrase or sentence. The murder of the Chicago federal judge’s mother and husband by a disturbed man who’d been before her in a medical malpractice case is horrific and chilling. But that tragedy argues for greater security for judges, not less speech from those criticizing their opinions in controversial cases. Verbal attacks on federal judges -- by congressmen or commentators or bloggers or dissenting colleagues -- is something entirely different than murderous attacks by disturbed litigants.

Judges write opinions. Judges get criticized. Judges continue writing opinions, some for the rest of their lives (i.e., life tenure). It’s called democracy.

Most weirdly, he said: "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this — a certain audacity — to this announcement."

What is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Any idiot can run for president. Dennis Kucinich is running for president. Until he was imprisoned, Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly. John Kerry ran for president. Today, all you have to do is suggest a date by which U.S. forces in Iraq should surrender, and you're officially a Democratic candidate for president.

Obama made his announcement surrounded by hundreds of adoring Democratic voters. And those were just the reporters. There were about 400 more reporters at Obama's announcement than Mitt Romney's, who, by the way, is more likely to be sworn in as our next president than B. Hussein Obama.

[snip]

This guy's like the ANWR of trite political aphorisms. There's no telling exactly how many he's sitting on, but it could be in the billions.

[snip]

I can't wait for Obama's inaugural address when he reveals that he loves long walks in the rain, sunsets, and fresh-baked cookies shaped like puppies.

Now that my "not-so-great" generation has its hands on the wheels of commerce and power in the United States, it is time that this vision that dare not speak its name, compiled from those rotted roots, seeks to act out the dreams of its youth as the policies of a generation entering its dotage. For a generation that so fervently believes in evolution, it is surprising that its youthful political goals have, in the intervening decades, evolved so little.

The first order of business now, as it was then, is to "Smash the State" by expanding the State's control over those that are not among the One Worlders. Of course, the real goal was never to "Smash THE State" as a ruling concept, but only to Smash the American State and replace it with something more soothingly socialist in which "all animals were equal but some more equal than others;" a state in which one party, controlling the culture and the media and the tax system, would rule out of benevolent concern for all over the one, Earth First uber alles. With free health care thrown just to make sure you could live longer in a perfect world.

Leading the charge to "Smash the State by Making a Bigger State" at present will be the Way-New Democratic Party and its outriders, the cosmopolitans. Or perhaps "outriders" doesn't quite capture it since, among the leadership in media, politics, business, and government, the overlap is almost total.

For these people, "the path to success" currently passes through Iraq and winds directly into "failure." They are in love with the idea of "American failure" because, in many ways, it validates their entire lives and empowers their politics. At the core of "the vision that dare not speak its name" is a perverted desire to see their country lose, to see it humbled on the world stage, and to give over the present benign American hegemony to other coarser and more draconian states. And why wouldn't they since their primary life allegiance is One World and not one country.

Should their abiding vision for failure in Iraq become a reality and Iraq descends into a genocidal nightmare, as it will, that's fine with them. That blood will wash more quickly off their hands than the blood of the thousands of Americans killed on 9/11 through the ineptitude of a foreign policy that, over decades, enabled the attacks. Attacks that, as we see now, did not raise any real alarms among the cosmopolitans that their One World dreams might face real world dangers, but merely troubled their sleep for a brief moment.

Should the ascent of Iran threaten the survival of Israel, the economy of the United States and the developed world, well, we and they deserve it. After all, we need to "get off" oil and why shouldn't we have a global depression teach us a lesson?

If an American city becomes a firestorm, well, that certainly isn't the opposition's fault. That was never a part of their vision. It will be, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever will be, the fault of Bush. They will never have to deny a vision that they did not articulate; that they did not name.

Seeking challenging, fast-paced thought leadership position in major Western industrial phallocracy. I have experience in a number of positions, including chapters 1-6 of the Kama Sutra, and an established record of speaking angry truth to theocratic power through edgy PostModern Riot Grrrrl punk feminism, which I am happy to disavow at your request.

Read the rest...

UPDATE:

Iowahawk has two more Amanda posts that I find very funny (warning, strong language):

It recalls the obituary in the NY Times on the death of Pope John Paul II. Here's how it appeared originally:

Even as his own voice faded away, his views on the sanctity of all human life echoed unambiguously among Catholics and Christian evangelicals in the United States on issues from abortion to the end of life.

need some quote from supporter

John Paul II's admirers were as passionate as his detractors, for whom his long illness served as a symbol for what they said was a decrepit, tradition-bound papacy in need of rejuvenation and a bolder connection with modern life.

Makr Steyn made this great point:

The pontiff's many "detractors" were all lined up and ready to go, but despite over a billion Catholics in the world and millions of evangelical Protestants throughout America who also admire him, the paper somehow failed to notice until the last minute that they'd overlooked something--"NEED SOME QUOTE FROM SUPPORTER".

It's actually rather startling to find a news story by the MSM that features our side accomplishing anything in the war other than as the targets of bombings or shootings.

From ABC news:

A NATO airstrike early Wednesday destroyed a compound housing a Taliban leader blamed for a wave of violence across southern Afghanistan, killing him and at least 10 others, NATO said.

NATO said the slain Taliban chief was linked to an uprising in the nearby town of Musa Qala, which the Taliban overran Feb. 1, and an attack Tuesday against a dam in nearby Kajaki.

"We have removed yet another Taliban enemy leader who will no longer threaten the peace and security of the Afghan people and their future," said Lt. Col. Angela Billings, a spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The airstrike, which hit a compound in a small village outside Musa Qala, killed 11 Taliban fighters, NATO said.

John Edwards Blogmistresses

Since returning from a brief vacation I am intrigued by the controversy surrounding the Edwards campaign decision to hire two foul mouthed anti-Christian bigots as their contacts to the blogosphere.

As the Political Pit Bull says, I have no dog in this fight because I had no intention of voting for John Edwards in any election, but it’s an indication of the strength of the far-Left blogosphere that the two women should have retained their jobs after the content of their websites were made public. The language used as well as the sentiments expressed are obscene … literally.

That having been said, it's at least worth mentioning that this man wants to be President of the United States; if he can't stand up to a couple doofuses on a computer, how the hell is he going to stand up to our enemies?

But Edwards, like very other candidate for the Democrat nomination for President is now firmly enmeshed in the coils of the Leftist “netroots” and cannot escape alive. From the leftist perspective, it’s empowering and heady. From the citizen’s perspective its frightening. We are seeing a slow motion revolution in the US, foreshadowed perhaps by the Chavez revolution in Venezuela, where that country’s President has morphed into a dictator in fact and in law.

Pray for the country.

Lord, bless us and forgive the sins we have committed.

UPDATE: Click HERE for John Edwards' diary. And HERE for "The Pendagon Papers."

Thanks to an unquestioning media, the American people have been conditioned to see iceberg conditions in Indianapolis and blame global warming (or, if they’re Patriots fans, a vengeful God). We don’t think, we just assume. In fact, we’ve all but stopped thinking about the issue of global climate change at all.